


Proprietary Formulae

by Scedasticity



Series: Alchemy [4]
Category: Shadow Unit
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 21:17:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/Scedasticity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's unexpectedly easy being sort-of friends with people with super-secret jobs who can't ever tell her anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proprietary Formulae

It's unexpectedly easy being sort-of friends with people with super-secret jobs who can't ever tell her anything, because Alby has lived her entire life surrounded by people who _don't_ have super-secret jobs and _still_ never tell her anything, and usually things which are a lot more obviously her business than some FBI case involving an anomaly.

******

Fred waited _quite_ a long time to share the information he'd actually gotten into stuntwork.  Sort of.  Some of his theater-department friends were acting in a microbudget local independent film about the claustrophobia of man's technocentric existence, or something, and one of them managed to shatter his ankle trying to do his own stunts.  They remembered Fred had been in gymnastics, and since they needed a new actor anyway, asked if he'd pitch in.  Fred agreed, and then didn't _tell_ anyone until after the tiny film had its tiny premiere at a somewhat less tiny film festival.

Fred says it was because he didn't want them disrupting the premiere, but Alby figures that if she were playing the part of a stalker ninja smartphone, she wouldn't want to tell anyone either.

******

Alvin Friedman never explicitly told anyone in his family that he was leaving the country _indefinitely_ ; they had to figure it out on their own.  And it was a very long time before anyone who had figured it out told anyone who hadn't figured it out, by which time almost everyone had figured it out.  (Lexy first said "I don't think he's ever coming back" at nineteen, to her therapist.)  Mostly.  (Alby was ten, and told her entire fourth-grade class.)

******

Lexy never told her mother about Freddy's have-Bertie-identify-things moneymaking scheme, or about Bertie trying to shoplift candy, or that Fred was lying about being on the basketball team, or about Fred's plan to manure the football field, or how Alby's guidance counselor _really_ wanted to talk to her.  Fred never told his mother about Bertie's weird marijuana fascination, or about Lexy having a public meltdown at college and starting therapy, or about Alby backing his car into a wall and breaking a taillight.  Alby never told her mother anything about any of the nannies, or a word of information on Fred after he left home.

******

Fred's the one who's kept everyone mystified about his romantic life -- still -- but Lexy never said a word about her first kiss or first boyfriend.  She went to prom with a guy she had apparently been dating for nearly a year, and whom no one in the family had met before.  More recently, she's gone out with a graduate student in Engineering named Bill, enough that he'd heard of Chloe before she tripped over them having dinner in a near-campus restaurant.  In the spirit of fairness, Lexy then introduced him to Fred and Alby.  No one knows if they're still seeing each other.

And Lexy did once, after listening to Alby's hour-long lament on boys, admit to having a boyfriend in undergrad who dumped her with the complaint that she was giving him heartburn and would probably give herself an aneurysm before she was thirty.

******

Lexy found out about her trust fund when she turned eighteen and got a letter explaining the partial access she was now entitled to beyond her now-increasing living allowance, which she had previously believed to be _an allowance_.  It's not a huge fund, but it's not a joke, either.  She was more immediately concerned that her trust fund was "The Michael and Victoria Aldrich Trust", and while the names sounded familiar she wasn't sure who Michael and Victoria Aldrich were.

Three searches of the old family albums, two phone calls to her Friedman grandparents, and one viewing of the trust papers later, she had some answers and some new questions.  The latter involved the reason that there was a wrongful-death suit over her great-grandparents, and how common it was to take the inheritance from and wrongful-death settlement regarding some relatives and endow a trust for your oldest child when you're not even married.  She didn't bother wondering why her mother never told her any of this.

Two years later, Fred was informed of the James Aldrich Trust, which at least explained why Marjorie had never cut his allowance after the fight.  Five years after that, Lexy had to dig the letter about the William Aldrich Trust out of the recycling and force Alby to read it.

******

Lexy and Fred both insisted that they never told Bertie she was a premature baby because she wasn't actually a premature baby.

"You were kicking people in the face within hours, and when you shrieked they'd get confused and show up with a crash cart," Fred informed her.

"Yeah, like you know.  Weren't you two out of _town_?"

"At Uncle Drew's house, yeah, but he picked up the _phone_ \--"

"You were a very healthy baby," Lexy cut in.  "And at the early end of normal."

"My mother went into labor because her taxi got rear-ended.  That sounds premature to me."

"Early end of normal.  End of story."

"Come on!" Bertie protested.  "It explains so much!  That's probably why I eat so much, I'm trying to put on the weight!"

Fred and Lexy exchanged glances.  "Uh, no," Fred said.  "Try again."

Bertie pouted.  "Post-traumatic stress disorder?  From the fender-bender?"

******

Marjorie never mentioned her children at work, which led to some confusion when her assistants picked up calls from the school.

******

No one volunteered any information to anyone else when all the tropical fish turned up dead.  The nanny got fired about a week later, though, which was probably related.

******

In elementary school and Junior High, Alby would "lose" notes from school, and tried to keep a low profile in report card season.  Marjorie did not appreciate poor performance or misbehavior, and as Fred complained, a Look from her was worth a two-hour lecture and a grounding from, like, anyone else.  (Rumor had it their aunt had once politely but firmly requested that Marjorie refrain from reprimanding anyone else's children at Friedman family gatherings; it led to too many hysterical crying jags.)

But then there was the gymnastics fight, and Alby gradually realized that Marjorie wasn't asking about report cards anymore.  Or behavior.  Or anything.  And then she didn't seem to care when Alby threw it in her face.  Or, if she did care about something (i.e. the pot), she refused to acknowledge Alby's role and fired the fucking nanny.

After that Lexy moved back in, and she did care about report cards.

******

Alby decided there was really no reason to tell anyone that she'd actually tipped off the police about BJ Lind and the fake toxic Ecstasy.  It might get back to her friends at school, and they wouldn't like her getting the police involved even if it was toxic.

(Later, she was _fairly_ sure she'd blurted it out to Chloe That Night, but Chloe never mentioned it, and Alby never asked.)

 


End file.
